Not breaking news: Bill O’Reilly is a moron

I just saw this and couldn’t resist passing along a comment Bill O’Reilly made on the radio last week after dining at the Harlem soul-food institution Sylvia’s, in the company of Al Sharpton:

I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship. It was the same, and that’s really what this society’s all about now here in the U.S.A. There’s no difference. There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, “M-Fer,” I think you know what that probably means, “I want more iced tea.” You know, I mean, everybody was — it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn’t any kind of craziness at all.

Silly Bill. Leaving aside everything else — by which I mean, bald-faced racism of far worse a sort than that which got Imus booted — O’Reilly is a bonehead about restaurants. Restaurants are about class and money much more than they’re about race. What would be shocking is if the crowd at McGuire’s one night — likely to be racially mixed — was behaving exactly the same as the crowd — also likely to be racially mixed — down the street at Bombers Burrito Bar during trivia night or Legends Sports Lounge during a Yankees-Red Sox game or any football Sunday.

More to the point, I’d wager that in any two hypothetical restaurants with similar price levels, one with a largely or exclusively white clientele and the other largely or exclusively black, the atmosphere and customer behavior wouldn’t be much different at all, whereas a sports bar would have very little in common with the “white” restaurant other than peachy-complected patrons.

We pass by a thousand Bill’s every day and don’t even know it, but they can be spotted fairly easily, if you pay attention. Most commonly, you’ll hear them telling a minority how ‘well-spoken’ they are… hahaha